


Control

by Experiment413



Series: Cataclysm [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Androids, Angst, Blood and Gore, Doomed Timelines, Dreams, Electrocution, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, Memories, Memory Loss, Minor Character Death, Multi, Murder, Near Death Experiences, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Possessive Behavior, Robots, Some characters only mentioned, Violence, Visions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-29 01:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 8,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7664674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Experiment413/pseuds/Experiment413
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years after the cataclysm fly by, only to have the horrors of the maze arise from the ashes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Maybe it was a year, maybe two, since the cataclysm, as all of your friends were beginning to deem it. Recovery was a slow process in the lot of you. Some even… vanished, as far as you knew. Or maybe you were just thinking it up in your head.

Slowness became quickness, and a few months after the first year, days and nights flicked by like rave lights. You still got chills up your spine, but you were starting to find safety in the fact that time was on your side.

 

Your name is Hadron Kaleido, you are an Agent of Derse, and maybe you think too much.

 

Two years since the cataclysm, and you’re all still in a state of unrest. Every last piece of information had been leaked out with the help of WV and the very scraps of everyone’s memories, every last string pulled. What the plan was, what happened to Mobius and WV, the hysteria attacks, the deception thrown about.

You guys spent a whole year scraping from the bottom of the barrel to piece together what happened. Alternates replaced alternates, doubles came and went, more people died, there was more blood on your hands and a lot more money on your head.

 

Whoever was left broke apart from each other for a while. Conversation died, dead counts rose, new people showed their faces.

 

A knock at the door made you rise from your seat, startled out of your reminisce. You definitely think too much.

 

“It’s unlocked,” you say, not moving to open it. Why are you standing up, goddammit. You don’t need to.

 

Mobius Trip peered in, bright eyes darting around briefly before he walked in. 

 

He was so paranoid nowadays. He didn’t need to be, you told him a lot. He was getting a little better, though. It wasn’t much. If anything he was trying.

 

“Hey,” you say, smiling. He lights up when he sees you, as always.

“Hi!”

“You doing okay?”

“I’m better today.”

 

His memory’s never been as bad as it is now. He’ll forget things he saw just a few minutes prior. He’s more mellow than usual, which has always been the case since the cataclysm. No one for sure knew what happened to him. He said he forgot it, or when he did remember, he wouldn’t talk about it, not even to you.

You had insisted he see a doctor. Not one of Prospit or Derse’s doctors, but hauling him to Earth to see one with more advanced technology. He’d always turn you down, said he was okay.

 

Really, all of you rarely mentioned it anymore, so it was strange to hear what Mobius said next.

 

“Do you remember the cataclysm, Hadron?”


	2. Chapter 2

The Wayward Vagabond clicked nervously, even in a safe place, beside you. He’d been a mess these past few years, and you tended to worry for him.

Of course, he was always happy when the Aimless Renegade showed up, never a time he didn’t now, you thought.

 

Clover sat in the corner, trying to talk with Dima Dracon, another Droog alternate similar to another ‘Dracon’ you had taken care of once, Dean, even though it was painfully hard to get across to the kid in the first place. Clover eventually gave up and moved away from the corner, and up to join you instead.

 

“Well,” the leprechaun said, “This place is kinda depressing today, isn’t it?”

You huffed. “Always is. Not too lively after the cataclysm.”

“What’s that?” he asked. He bounced on his heels.

“The what?”

“The cataclysm.” (You could practically hear WV’s heart skip a beat when he heard that word.)

“Oh,” you said. “I forgot you weren’t there for that. Mobius had mentioned it again, I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Tell meeee,” Clover chimed. He was giving you that look, that look he gave everyone at least once. It worked on Droog and Crowbar, and sometimes you. This was not one of those times.

“It’s not exactly something people want to remember,” you said, glancing to WV and AR.

“Oh,” he said, stopping his little bounce. “Okay.”

 

With that, he went on his merry little way, and sat back down with Dima.

 

The apartment dived down back to its normal quiet chatter, rarely interrupted by WV clicking and jittering. He eventually walked his way back up to you, tugged lightly on your sleeve and whispered, “You can tell him if you want to.”

You pat him lightly, nodding and going on your way, sitting down with Dima and Clover. As you had left, you heard WV say, “Just be quiet, so I can’t hear.”

 

“Fine,” you said, sitting down. “I can tell you.”

Clover’s eyes lit up. Dima remained grim as usual.

“There was a problem one day, WV had to leave.” You dropped your volume, and WV didn’t even flinch. You assumed this was fine. “He left an AI in charge of his accounts for a while. It went rogue.”

Clover perked up. “Rogue?”

“It wanted to kill WV for a while, we thought he’d died. Mobius went in to check on it.”

“And?”

“Didn’t come back. I went with PM and Paint, to keep watch and make strategies on advancements, just in case. Bec Noir attacked us. We barely escaped with our lives. We didn’t receive word back from Mobius, so I went in to check if he was okay.”

“What is the deal with you two,” Dima muttered.

“Shut up,” Clover snapped, elbowing him.

Ignoring them, you kept talking. “I found him beaten and bruised, and we all got lost in a horrible, wire-filled maze. We found no escape, but to defeat that AI and free WV, if he was even alive.”

“And he was, right? He’s fine.” Clover turned his head to WV, who was talking to AR.

“We came out with everyone emotionally dead,” you said, then looked around again. “And some people actually died.”

“Sounds terrible.” He shivered.

 

Suddenly, the lights died, and darkness filled the already dark house. WV screeched and fell into the corner, right into your arms.

“Hey, calm down,” you said calmly. “Just a power outage. This has been happening a while recently.”

“I’ve got it,” AR called, and scurried out of the apartment.

Clover laughed. “Spooooky,” he sing-songed.

 

Eventually, AR came back up.

“Just the generator,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

You stood up, picking WV up with you. You dropped him to the ground, and he ran back to AR, clicking, ‘That really scared me!’

 

“Best you all go home, then,” you said. “This might last a while.”

Clover waved and popped out.

“Bye,” AR said, and left with WV.

You turned to Dima, but he’d vanished already.

And that was that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dusk doesn't inform me of shit. So if he doesn't say anything for the next hour when I ask him to beta something, I usually just post it anyway.  
> This ass.  
> <3

Somewhere, thousands of miles away from Derse, something blinked its eyes back to life, filling a dark room with a bright cyan glow.

It slowly moved itself, regaining control of itself one joint at a time. It sat up, feeling at its neck, and finding the severed cord that had been cut two years ago.

 

D.O.O.M.E.D. gave himself a metallic sigh, glaring at the generator next to him. So the backup had worked. He’d have to stay connected to this until he could restore his power systems.

“Damn boy and his friends…” he muttered. He looked about the room of concrete and wires, his own domain of horrors.

 

He checked through his systems, to catch himself up. He was going to have a lot of work to do if he wanted to continue on his path.

A new body, first, he told himself, and, hauling the generator along with him, left to work.

 

He knew his next target. That girl.

This was her fault.

  
  
  
  


The power restored itself a few hours later. Skaia was well in the sky already, but fuck it, you remained awake. You didn’t mind the daytime, except for the fact that you got so tired if you didn’t go to bed before Skaiarise.

You briefly banged your head against your desk, twirling your pen between your fingers. You’d downed two pills today, yet your mind was still rushing with images of the cataclysm.

You couldn’t blame Mobius for this, he never meant any harm with bringing it up again. He legitimately didn’t remember anything about the cataclysm. Everything was a blur in his head, and you could tell it hurt him more than you.

 

You wondered what that android had done to his mind.

 

Suddenly, your phone buzzed. A text from an unknown user.

 

\-- UNKNOWN [??] began pestering obsidianTowers [OT]. --

??: Hello again.

OT: Do I know you.

??: Yes.

OT: Why aren’t you saved in my contacts then.

??: You must’ve removed me.

OT: What’s my name.

??: Hadron Kaleido, Agent of Derse, a stubborn woman who will look doom in its eyes and swear revenge on it, then never forget.

OT: How do you know me.

??: Oh, we’ve known each other for a long time, Hadron…

??: In fact, I’ll be around Derse soon, so I guess I’ll see you then.

OT: I suppose.

??: Goodbye, Kaleido.

\-- UNKNOWN [??] ceased pestering obsidianTowers [OT]. --

 

You squinted at the Pesterchum window a little while longer, than closed it. Whatever. It wouldn’t bother you, it was probably just a prank from one of your friends, maybe Clover or someone.

 

You got up, walking over to your bedroom, and deciding enough was enough, and you’d just have to tell BQ that your work had gone unfinished because you were too weak to stay awake past noon. Surely that’d get a laugh out of her.

  
You fell into your bed, dozing off quickly.


	4. Chapter 4

You woke up with a dull pain in the back of your head. You sat up, feeling around.

 

“Fuck, did I fall asleep on a loose knife again…” you mutter to yourself, and keep feeling about in the darkness until you realize that this isn’t even your room.

 

Your eyes adjust quickly to the darkness, to prove that you’re not even in your house. You reach for your Sylladex cards, and find they’re not even there. Okay, a carapacian could never accomplish stealing your Sylladex off of you, so you certainly aren’t on Derse, unless the Queen is pulling some elaborate prank on you.

 

You click quietly, cursing this predicament. You get up, moving slowly as to avoid hurting yourself, and stumble semi-blindly with your hands in front of you. You eventually hit a wall of concrete and thin wires, which catch your hand instantly, as if they were alive and craving for food. You pulled away swiftly.

 

Then, suddenly, the bitter feeling that you knew where you were set in.

 

A screen flickered on behind you, and when you turned, you were met with a silver square face with bright cyan eyes and no mouth.

 

“We meet again, Kaleido,” the android says with a little chuckle.

“D.O.O.M.E.D.,” you hiss. You swear he’d grin if he could.

“Nice to see you remember an old friend.”

“You were never a friend to any of us.”

“I believe Vagabond would beg to differ.”

“You tortured him,” you spit. “Along with Mobius. You hurt them and none of us will ever forgive you.”

“Oh, really? Or is it the fact that they’re with you that’s hurting them?”

 

You give a hiss and hurl the knife in your pocket at his screen, but it clatters to the floor, making an odd dull sound. You stand there for a good three seconds while D.O.O.M.E.D. cackles loudly, and when you snap out of it, you realize that the Dersite knife in your pocket had been replaced with a dull plastic one.

 

“What are you plotting,” you say, glaring up at the screen.

“Oh, just to rule your little universe. It’s so pathetic and fragile, why not bring some stability to it? You could use it.”

He speaks to you like he’s flirting, and it makes you so mad. You can tell he’s enjoying it, but you can’t help yourself to get angry.

 

“You see, I’ve noticed something,” he starts. “You and Trip are always connected.” He holds up two chess pieces, a black knight and a white rook. “But when that connection is harmed in away way…”

He crushes the black knight in his right hand. Fractals of obsidian fall to the floor beneath him.

“The other always runs to help.”

He holds up the remaining white rook.

 

“This is a lure,” you say, glancing to the floor. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I know he’ll bring backup. That’s why I’m prepared.”

“You’re a monster.”

“I know. Ciao.”

 

The screen died, filling the room with darkness again. You looked about, and finding no door to exit, you sat on the floor, tearing whatever wires dared get near you into two with your bare hands. This gave you a few small electric zaps, but it was nothing you couldn’t handle.

 

You swear an hour had passed until a hatch opened and something rectangular was tossed at you. You picked up the little device and the paper beneath it. It was a phone, certainly not yours, with only Pesterchum installed. The paper with it read, ‘I see everything you say, watch yourself. -D’.

 

You huffed, setting up your account onto it.

 

\-- obsidianTowers [OT] began pestering goldenTowers [GT]. --

OT: Hey.

GT: Hey!

GT: How are you?

OT: Okay.

GT: You weren’t home. I meant to check in on you, I guess you were busy.

OT: Yeah, I had to scramble to work.

GT: You left your papers on the desk.

OT: Shit!

 

You hated to play along with this. It was horrible.

 

OT: Also, I have to go.

OT: Be safe. I love you.

GT: I love you too.

\-- obsidianTowers [OT] ceased pestering goldenTowers [GT]. --

 

That was fruitless, you told yourself. Someone else, you thought, scrolling through your contacts.

Someone Dersite.

 

\-- obsidianTowers [OT] began pestering aimlessRenegade [AR]. --

OT: Hi AR.

AR: hello hadron!

OT: How’s WV?   
AR: he is doing okay.

OT: That’s great. 

OT: You should’ve been there with us last week. Clubs thought it’d be funny to mess around with us and I got pinched by a weird contraption he made in the middle of it.

AR: sounds chaotic.

AR: wait, i have to go. talk to you later!

OT: Bye.

\-- aimlessRenegade [AR] ceased pestering obsidianTowers [OT]. --

 

You know it got across to him. He worked as an Agent much longer than you have. He knows the codes. So far, you just hoped D.O.O.M.E.D. never caught on, and that Mobius wouldn’t panic.

With AR on the case, that most likely wouldn’t be.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wheezes  
> this took a while
> 
> expect short stories again, because writers block is hard to kill if i dont get to writing some again

When you woke up, it was pitch black again. You didn’t know the time, but you didn’t care. You went to a wall, pressing close to try to hear through it, hoping AR would come around eventually. There was just deafening silence, a brief reminder that you were almost completely alone.  _ Almost. _

 

The air rang with electricity, signs of a monster coming back to life. Once he was about again, it’d be terrible.

You tore at another nearby bunch of wires. Anything to delay him, even if it was small and it did hurt.

 

His screened flicked to life as you’d just adjusted to the light level, leaving you temporarily blinded. 

 

“Rise and shine,” D.O.O.M.E.D. chimed.

“More like rise and too much shine.”

“You are not used to the bright, are you.” He laughs.

 

You rip at more wires. Your hand’s developing a burn from the electricity.

 

“Hey now,” he says. “You’re just hurting yourself more. Do you see that’ll make you more usefuuuul? More tired, more ignorant, less of yourself. Are you sure you want to go down that path?”

You’d hate to say he was right.

“By the way, try to enjoy yourself. I think you’ll be here a while, but not too long. Your friends may put up a bit of a fight, but I’ll get rid of them.” With that, his screen died out.

  
  


For the next thirty minutes, you picked at small wires and took short naps to occupy yourself. Then you picked up the phone, the small screen flickering to life. A new application appeared. 

It had no title, but a lone camera icon as the thumbnail.

 

You clicked it. It showed a map. You quickly realized that this was the maze. You’d never seen the whole thing before, how complex it was. It seemed to have hundreds of possible routes, and to only think you’d gone down a few. You dragged your finger down the screen, to realize the maze was not just one level, but several. The whole 3D model was here, at your fingertips.

A violet dot blinked in one of the various rooms scattered about, in a room roughly near the back part of the maze, but further underground judging by several staircases nearby.

You stood up and walked around. The dot moved with you. So, that was you, you supposed.

 

Sitting back down, you examined the functions. Glowing blue panels in the maze glowed softly from the dark background and white outlines. Touching them, you were given a view of a supposed camera, looking out to the hall it pointed towards. A record button was to the right side of this screen, and a smaller screen to the left showed your own face.

 

You clicked the arrow in the top left, sending you back to the map.

 

A button to the right read [ALL SCREENS]. So, well, you guessed it selected all the blue panels.

 

You closed the app. It may come it handy, if he put it there, you guessed. Maybe it’s there for a reason.

  
  


You sat there staring at the ceiling for another thirty minutes. You jumped as Pesterchum buzzed.

 

\-- aimlessRenegade [AR] began pestering obsidianTowers [OT]. --

 

AR: so the problem exists of wv freaking out frequently now.

AR: like every five minutes.

AR: i’m going on a trip with him though, to see if he calms down.

OT: Where are you headed?

AR: i don’t know.

AR: i’ll think about it.

 

\-- aimlessRenegade [AR] ceased pestering obsidianTowers [OT]. --

 

Oh thank Skaia, he was coming for you.

You knew he would.

  
Shutting it off to go to sleep, you were alerted again by the loud sounds of machinery and grinding gears.


	6. Chapter 6

Something was wrong.  
  
  
Your heart was racing, swirling in whatever depths of space and time there were here. Visions, flashes of other worlds. It wasn’t your universe. You could tell. You didn’t know how.  
You couldn’t make sense of it. It was chaotic, glimpses into other realms and lands you’d never seen. A familiar smile, countless deaths, and more blood than you ever imagined, a young child’s laugh, a Dersite ship flying overhead an empty Battlefield, two Exiles on the run. They were all different but so similar in a way that confused you and made your head hurt.  
  
  
Something tells you that the walls around you will be covered in blood in the near future.  
  
  
You woke up with a pounding headache, and your chest felt like it was going to explode. You reached for the phone, thinking you should tell someone about it, but you stop your hand from grabbing it, choosing against it.  
You sat up.  
  
  
“What was that?” you said into the dark, small space. Your voice echoed off the walls. You knew he could hear you.  
“What are you going on about?” D.O.O.M.E.D. flickered onto the nearby screen.  
“The noise,” you said.  
“Oh,” the android said, tapping his ‘chin’, making a little dinging sound as he did. “Just some adjustments I’m making is all. It’s nothing you have to worry about.”  
“I’ll worry if I want,” you muttered, lying on the concrete floor again. His screen died, as did the whirring in the background.  
  
  
You picked up the phone, which displayed nothing new.  
Pressing the camera icon as opposed to Pesterchum, you saw something new next to one of the blue screens on an upper level of the maze. Pressing it brought you to the camera’s overlook of the room, a gray hallway with wires scattered about, but not as many as where you were.  
  
  
The head of someone was poked in, brown haired and light skinned. They motioned to something, and a Dersite in a big yellow sweater followed behind.  
Shit.  
  
  
You moved to turn up the volume. The nearby screen turned bright teal, as you expected, casting a blue glare into the corner of the camera lens, and scaring Mobius and WV as the two walked into the corridor. WV took to hiding behind AR, making himself as small as possible, and Mobius just froze in place, unsure what to do. Clover walked in behind them with Dima.  
  
  
“Look at this!” chimed D.O.O.M.E.D. “A whole party! I was expecting you.”  
This was a horrible idea.  
“Who the hell’s this guy,” Clover said, wide-eyed at the screen.  
“I see you have new friends as well. Hello, I’m D.O.O.M.E.D. As for you three, it’s good to see you back.”  
“Where’s Hadron,” Mobius hissed.  
“Now, I wouldn’t tell me unless you gave me some more help, no?” His words made Mobius flinch back.  
“We are not going to fall to you again, D.O.O.M.E.D.,” AR snapped.  
“Oh?” the android piped. “Need me to make an example of how much stronger I’ve gotten, then?”  
  
  
You heard gears whirring again, but not near you. It was coming from the scene you were watching. WV kept trying to get as small as he could behind AR.   
  
  
In a furious and sudden SMASH, two of the walls crashed against each other, and within them was Dima, now crushed up. Clover got lucky, of course, and sidestepped it before it got him.  
Now they were locked in from wherever they came from, and Dima was already dead. They were horrified.  
  
  
You didn’t notice you were crying till a tear of yours fell onto the phone screen. You wiped it away with your sleeve.  
  
  
“That’s your warning. Good luck.”  
D.O.O.M.E.D. gave a loud metallic laugh, and you shut off the phone.


	7. Chapter 7

You were pretty sure you were up for hours just watching them, flipping from camera to camera. In no time were you passed out again, exhausted. The dreams were back. They were growing more vivid in your head.  
Maybe Skaia was helping you again, after all these years.  
  
  
Whatever it was threw you into a different reality.  
All of the sudden you were standing in a void, dotted with stars, giving off red hues. Looking at your hands, you discovered you were a translucent gray. The place was so quiet and still that it seemed to burst with power, even with two figures in the distance. Both hovered inches from the ‘ground’, which was some transparent thing you stood upon. One blended in with the pitch of the void, the other blossomed red like the stars themselves. Their voices were muffled until you stepped closer.  
  
  
Their conversation was a jumbled mess of words you couldn’t understand if they were put together, like they had a higher understanding of the world. The one in red mentioned something, which the one in black turned down, saying it was some other thing. Red told Black that they doubted them. “It was us!” said Red, “We did it all, didn’t we?”  
Black seemed to ponder to themselves. “Maybe,” they said.  
“It was always us,” Red said, staring out at the stars above. “You and I are constants.”  
“I know that,” Black said. “Where are you going with it?”  
“If we’re such rarities, shouldn’t we be given power? And if we have that power, shouldn’t we be rarities? Have you never thought of this? To think you’re the one so into it.”  
  
  
Red wasn’t arguing with Black. It was more a slight pester, by their tone. Black laughed at it.  
  
  
“I considered it,” Black said. “I guess you’re thinking about it right.”  
“What did you think it was?”  
“The inevitable whim of the universe.”  
“It’s just destiny as it is. It was never a whim or a change. It was always like this. We just know each other. Even if one of us dies, we still hear from one another beforehand.”  
“It’s always us,” Black wondered. “Hm. We can always keep that in our minds, I guess.”  
  
  
You woke up quite violently. Some realization had hit your subconscious, but you didn’t know what it was, and trying to dig into it made it vaguer and vaguer. Perhaps Skaia would help you later, even if you weren’t remotely close to the glow of it.  
  
  
The sound of machinery rumbled on in the background, some nasty plot of D.O.O.M.E.D.’s in the works.  
  
  
You clicked open the phone, bringing life to the screen.  
You stared at it for what seemed to be an hour, before pressing the camera icon again. Pesterchum had vanished.  
  
  
Another red exclamation point icon was next to one of the screens, and it slowly flickered from screen to screen, as someone moved down one of the upper hallways. Pressing one brought you to the view of the pathways again, with a new command. [FOLLOW] appeared in red on the screen you touched, and you pressed it, causing it to flip to the next camera where movement was detected.  
  
  
The record button seem to beckon to you. You pressed it as the camera flipped to one in a corner, and Mobius stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the nearby screen.  
  
  
It was dead silent. You didn’t know what it’d done, so you just kind of looked over the screen to see if it had indicated that something had changed.  
  
  
Quietly, on the low volume of the phone in your hands, Mobius seemed to squeak, “Hadron?”  
He could see you. Goddammit. “Hey,” you croaked. Was he tearing up?  
“That’s really you, right,” he said. “It’s not another one of his tricks?”  
“Yeah, it’s me, don’t worry.” You never knew the whole story about what happened to him. Whatever it was made him so nervous all the time.  
“Where are you? Are you okay?”  
“I’m really far underground. I’ll be okay though. Be safe for me.”  
He nodded, and you ended the transmission.  
  
  
You’d hold back on telling him about your dreams for now. You didn’t want D.O.O.M.E.D. to know about them. Maybe they were telling you something about the future.  
  
  
You moved to lie back down but heard some unseen door open and D.O.O.M.E.D. stepped in, twirling the very knife you’d originally had with you. As most Dersite blades you carried on your person, it was built to slice through shell, and too many times was your fleshy self the subject of an attack with one.  
  
  
“What did I tell you?” he mused aloud. “Perhaps it was minor, but it still counts.”  
“What do you want,” you said, standing up. You finally got a good look at him.  
  
  
He now had extra protection near his formerly exposed wires, especially along his lifeline, which Droog had originally killed him by breaking. He walked now with no sound and was a little more graceful. You guess he was making the advancements to himself now.  
  
  
“If you tell them anything,” he said. “You’ll just hurt yourself more.”  
“What do you mean,” you spat.  
“Oh, clueless little Kaleido. How about I make an example for you?”  
  
  
He never had any good intentions, though you didn’t even flinch as he strode up to you. You held your ground, staring his dead in his glowing cyan eyes.  
  
  
“I am not afraid of you, D.O.O.M.E.D. I understand fully that you need me.”  
“Well, not anymore, really,” he said. “Now that your friends are trapped down here with you. Though, it’d be appreciated if you kept yourself in one piece…”  
  
  
Unexpectedly, the blade sliced deep into your forearm, cutting with ease. It gave a harsh metal sting, and your whole arm hurt, feeling like it was burning. You stumbled backward, holding your sliced arm tightly with your free one while you kept your eyes shut in pain.  
  
  
Once you looked up, you saw through your blurred, tear-filled eyes the figure of D.O.O.M.E.D. with your blade, now coated in blood.  
  
  
“Watch yourself,” he said, before turning and leaving. Wires moved aside wherever he stepped as he left.  
  
  
You sat down, looking at the wound. It was gaping, bleeding vibrant red, and it hurt like hell. You grabbed your sleeve, trying to stop the blood flow with it alone.  
For now, you’d sleep on it, just hoping you wouldn’t die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aggressive cackling  
>  _shit's fucked boys_


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy election day  
> im terrified

You discovered years ago, during your mission, that vivid things don’t often fade away. Be they physical or mental, you’re still tied to time. Even if it wasn’t your PTSD, things still hung around, little memories your brain deemed important that Skaia tended to mash into visions. You were not one to see the future. Instead, you saw the past.  
  
  
You tasted saltwater in your mouth and… pumpkin. Gross! Disgusting! Some version of you plunged their head back into the ocean, hoping to wash the taste out. Dehydration was better than that.  
  
  
You stood up, shaking your head free of the water, noticing that this was you, but a different you. Smaller, thinner, skin much more darkened from the sun beating down on you, and you had infinitely less scars. There were ones from a bullet graze here and there, but you were too young to care about those memories.  
  
  
You stuck your hands back in your hoodie pocket and began to trek through the sand. Gigantic leafy trees towered above your head, and you had the feeling that climbing one of those would be amazing. Food first, though, and definitely not pumpkin. Never again.  
  
  
You were near up a tree reaching for a papaya when you were hit square in the head by something metal and you fell back to the sand beneath. Grunting horribly, you examined the little thing that hit you. A perfect, thin gear the size of your fist. You lifted it up, the metal caught the sun’s rays, and--  
  
  
Reality hit you again. The burning pain in your arm subsiding, the feeling of misery weighing on you, the cement wall you slumped against, and the rumbling of the walls.  
You sighed, looking at your new wound, which had messily scabbed over. You brushed the excess dried blood off, leaving small bits of crunchy red-brown flecks beneath your feet.  
You felt super weak when you stood up, your right arm near useless now, causing you to wonder how much blood you’d really lost. Nothing as bad as Jack, you thought. Nothing would be as bad as Jack. But there wasn’t time to dwell on that.  
  
  
You scooted over and tapped the phone alive with your good arm. The little red warning signs were alive on two of the screens, and you clicked open one of them. AR, WV, and Clover were with one another, Clover examining the walls. AR looked hurt, WV looked scared (as he normally was now), and Clover still didn’t have a scratch on him, but he did look tired.  
  
  
Your screen went live when you pressed the record button.  
  
  
“Hadron?” AR sounded surprised. “Mobius said two days ago that he heard from you, where were you? We went back to the same place he went and everything.”  
Two days? “What happened,” you said. Your voice sounded horrible.  
“I don’t know. Mobius guessed you vanished.”  
You sighed. “Hold on, AR, I’ll be back. Stay put.”  
  
  
You closed the transmission. If anything, it was going to be better to protect them more than yourself. The faster they get you out, the fewer people get hurt. If you could keep D.O.O.M.E.D. focused on you, the others couldn’t get as injured.  
  
  
You pulled the map open again. They were a few levels down now. Good. You opened the video back up.  
  
  
“I have a plan. Keep moving slowly through the maze, and keep setting temporary bases up, okay. Keep a trail of your path. You can’t let D.O.O.M.E.D. sabotage you here. I know he’s listening to me, and I may go for a few more days after this, but listen. The maze is bigger than we thought it was. The deeper you go, the more lost you get, the further underground you’re actually going. I can keep up with you, but I fear not for long. Okay?”  
  
  
AR nodded. “And what’ll happen to you?”  
“I don’t know for sure. The more I hold back on, the less I’ll get hurt.”  
WV looked up at your screen, worried.  
“I’m going to head out again.”  
“Hadron,” Clover piped. “Be safe.”  
“I’ll try.”  
  
  
You shut the phone off. You sat and waited. D.O.O.M.E.D. never arrived like you expected, but eventually, the whirring of the machines grew so loud and annoying that you moved to lie down and cover your eyes. As you got down, a violent spark of electricity zapped you.  
  
  
One side of your face burned and it felt like it was buzzing, almost. You backed away from the wire you’d accidentally fallen on, the muscles in your face and neck contracting on their own. It hurt so much that you felt like you’d snap something in your neck or jaw. When you finally yanked away and gained control of yourself again, you ripped the wire with your already bad hand, sending another jolt up your arm and leaving a nasty burn on it. While it twitched uselessly and painfully you scooted away back to the wall.  
  
  
Looking at your arm, you could hardly imagine what your face looked like.  
  
  
You shut your eyes. The rumbling stopped, and so did your dreams.


	9. Chapter 9

Once you’d woken up, you spent countless hours following Mobius, WV, AR, and Clover. According to the map, the group was about in the middle of the maze, heading downwards certainly. Clover usually led the group, and you were surprised his happy demeanor hadn’t been quenched. The lucky little fool, you had to appreciate him, you guess especially now.  
  
Checking the camera, you’d discovered a lightning-shaped scar contrasting against the left side of your face. It was blistered at places and hurt when you touch it. You found out the same scar ran down that same side of your neck, having burned through the fabric of your shirt. It branched out like a river and the streams it fed and was more widespread than you thought.  
You’d just wait it off. You hoped it wouldn’t get worse.  
  
Tick tock, it’s all your brain did. If you didn’t know the true time, you’d count the seconds.  
At 635, you were staring at the ceiling.  
At 2473, you whistled songs you remembered from the distant past.  
At 4952, you dozed off.  
  
You woke up. Nothing was new, you didn’t think a lot of time passed, maybe an hour. You clicked the screen alive, moving to go talk to the others.  
Clover was at the head of the party still. It was still strange, seeing him perfectly happy with the other three looking depressed and scared. It seemed like his guard was down.  
  
“Ay-- Kally?” Clover looked up. “The hell’d?”  
Mobius flinched. You even saw him move slightly in the way he usually did to pull his chain out of his Sylladex. You both knew little things about each other like that.  
“Um.” Shit. You’d forgotten- the scar on your face was new to them. “Shit. I’m fine.”  
“That’s not fine. Explain,” said Clover. AR nodded. “Yeah.”  
If you said anything, D.O.O.M.E.D. was going to do something about it. That shock from yesterday had to be his doing. You couldn’t let him get to your head.  
“It was D.O.O.M.E.D. Guess it was revenge for… yesterday.” You hope it was yesterday.  
You swore he muttered, “Prissy lil’ prick.”  
“If anything, you’re getting deeper underground.”  
“We’re gonna find the fuckin’ core of the planet before you at this rate!” Clover said. You gave a little grin, but quickly returned to a neutral expression when you realized it started to hurt.  
  
You check the map, clicking out of the conversation for a brief second.  
They’d moved down a lot.  
  
“There are maybe nine floors left between you and me,” you said, opening the video back up.  
Mobius and WV breathed sighs of relief simultaneously. What had they been through, you wondered?  
The rumbling was back. You looked back quickly, probably out of surprise or paranoia, you’d guessed. You were losing control over yourself, just through this isolation. Think one thing, act on another. Tick tock.  
  
You said your small goodbyes, parting with the group, maybe only for a while. You hoped it’d only be for a while.  
Something changed from your perspective though just as you clicked away from the conversation. The red lights on the map died, but you were too tired or maybe too out of it to care.  
  
The same door opened as your mind faded out of reality again. Metal against concrete snapped you back to the real world, made you jump to your feet, and you were happy at least some form of your Dersite habits were back. Probably not for long.  
A metallic sigh shook you fully awake, and your eyes met D.O.O.M.E.D.  
  
“You never learn, do you?” he said, “You should really think about your actions. Acting on a whim isn’t gonna get you anywhere in life, Kaleido.”  
“I dunno,” you responded. “Acting on a whim is kind of my life.”  
He tapped a claw quietly. “Joking won’t get you anywhere either.”  
“Then what will?”  
“Holding still for just a second.”  
  
With that, you found wires around your neck, blocking airways and you gasped for breath, just to get nothing. You ended up knocked out again, for probably the millionth time in your life. One of these days it’d probably just kill you.  
  
And a familiar dream hit you like a trainwreck.  
You stood in a new galaxy, more formed and stable. Like the more nebula-like area from before, it glowed red against black, looking even closer you could see blues.  
  
Red and Black were there again, too easily blended in to ever make sense of who they really were. Black held a little teal sphere in one of their hands, staring at it intently.  
“What,” said Red. “It’s not like that one thing can be so much trouble for you, can it?” They plucked it from Black’s hand, looking over it like it was just some child’s toy.  
“One little planet can’t drive a person mad.” Red looked up to Black.  
“You’re probably right,” Black said, taking it back and flicking it away into the void. Something within that void just ate away at the thing in a matter of seconds, reducing it to dust. “This place is ours, isn’t it? It shouldn’t control us.”  
“We made it, we control it, not the other way around,” Red said. They moved planets gently and swirled dust clouds, very precise in their actions.  
  
It kind of stunned you, a galaxy and its gods, and there you were watching it all.  
Maybe you were just going mad.  
  
“It’s just a matter of changing things slightly to go in your favor.”  
“That’s your thing, though,” Black said. Red just laughed.  
“If you try hard enough, I’m sure you could do the same thing, just in your own way, you know?”  
“I can destroy things pretty easily, I don’t know.”  
“Then work with it. We’re both new to this, no harm’s gonna be done. We can just start from scratch again anyway.”  
“That’d be a lot to redo,” Black laughed. “Part of me would hate to go over all of it again. The rest wouldn’t. We’d end up the same, though, right?”  
“Probably,” Red said. “Now that? That’s your thing.”  
“Something tells me it’d change.”  
“You’re just mad.”  
“That’s what they all say.”  
  
You woke up to a lot of things. More wires, less noise, a ringing in your head, an epiphany, more blood, and a horror.  
You sat up, bits of your clothes covered in a thin layer of dried and cracking blood, and looking up from that you saw something worse. A little green shape, in a suit about the same color as their skin, and a violet hat, face first on the floor and completely lacerated head-to-toe, surrounded by a small pool of blood.  
  
Clover’s corpse was laying in the middle of the room, with no wires surrounding him at all. As for you, on the other hand, you were almost buried in them, as was the rest of the room. You grabbed the phone-like device, finding the camera cracked. You tried to turn it on, but it was dead.  
  
You slowly moved to Clover. Was this a trap? You could tell it wasn’t the second you touched him, the half-fuzzy half-wet feeling of leprechaun skin was something you knew all too well, and you quickly brushed your hand off on your pants, using up most of your willpower on trying not to throw up alone.  
  
Clover was dead. You would’ve cried, but you couldn’t break yourself to it somehow. It was like you were just getting used to this, though you truly felt terrible inside, and it wasn’t just you feeling physically ill, which you probably were.  
  
You fell on the ground suddenly and a bunch of wires advanced, landing face first into them and scrambling to get up. When you looked up and around again, Clover was gone, just the pool of blood remained. You kicked and tore at wires, sparks shooting up your arms and sending searing pain up them as you did just to stand up. You walked over to the clear area again, sitting down outside the radius of the pool, arms twitching from shock.  
  
You were tired, and as gears stopped grinding in the background, you decided to just stop and think, and maybe sleep.  
You hadn’t gotten proper rest at all, you were guessing. You were just too jumpy to get any sort of rest.  
  
You briefly came up with two conclusions as you were drifting off.  
  
You were almost entirely alone now, and Red and Black were actually you and Mobius.


	10. Chapter 10

Control was given to many things in life. A lot of people pulled the strings and made reality go in their own way. Some shaped their own realities and created worlds of their own. In a sense, a lot of people had magical powers. Intelligence could be considered an ability, no? How sentient creatures could manipulate and design and shape. Creative minds had creative ways. A lot of people also were being controlled. The little guys, they called them in sayings. While they always had the capabilities of becoming a controller, many just didn’t. Situations became too dire and some could forget they had heart. Simply because they were used doesn’t mean they never had a use, they always played parts and kept the planet spinning, a big responsibility.

 

You were beginning to figure that perhaps you weren’t the type to be controlled, and no controller can control another.

Maybe the world worked oddly like that. People were destined to tug at the strings, to be the strings pulled, or to even be both.

 

You closed the console, the image in the middle going back to red, and spun it back a few feet into the void again, the thing briefly rolling like a spun coin and jumping as its projections hit the ‘floor’ before stopping in its default position.

 

Normally you had the time to do things. Pondering wasn’t one of those things, but you could never help it.

Opening the map again, you traced the lines connecting universes for the likely millionth time in your life. You could draw every thread to the middle point, no matter where that thread originated. Destiny, you’d called it in the past. Every cog in the machine worked for some greater good, and it seems you’d pulled the strings enough that it was your vision of a greater good and his.

Maybe you were lucky in that sense, maybe you were unlucky in that sense.

 

You eyed the lone universe in the corner of the map. It was newer, you’d never seen it show till a few days ago, and you easily spun the thread from it around your finger. Nothing had seemed to connect to it. It was its own origin, you thought, maybe a former magnet verse? It had that feeling, it acted much like one, but it lacked a lot of traits magnet universes did.

You huffed, tying it to your source universe. There, at least it had something. Maybe it was working in your favor, as well.

 

You floated away briefly to fetch the flung console, moving it above the universe’s place in the stars. Spinning it clockwise as you opened it revealed many things. A lot of terror, a lot of pain, then silence followed by a more happier sense. You were going to call this one doomed, but you decided against it, looking through its future. It didn’t directly assist yours, but that was alright with you. You’d leave it be and never expose it to the chaos of the massive universe you called home.

 

You shut the console. They’d make it.

  
The real you woke up crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Magnet universes' is a term a few of us threw about in relation to the universe most of our roleplays take in. It's really just a universe that tends to 'absorb' other universes and things/people related to it.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the mtahk album turned 6 today!!!  
> this is my last contribution for today  
> ive done a lot hurk

Things hit you like a train, freaked you out like a waking dream. More pieces of the puzzle you thought you’d solved back on Skaia so many years ago were still unconnected and scattered about the place, just when you thought you were done putting it together too…  
   
“How’d you sleep?” piped D.O.O.M.E.D. from one of the monitors. You stood up, but not before running a few fingers over the now dried pool of blood. You examine your hand, the dusty red just barely staining your fingers.  
“Fine.”  
“That’s great to here. I think I got the best sleep in my life. Which, that didn’t involve me sleeping. You know, the concept of sleeping is kind of odd, don’t you think? Think about it, your body shuts down and your brain forces you to not move for a while, all while you’re just in a comatose state. Unresponsive.”  
“You talk like you know everything.”  
“And so do you. See, we got a lot in common.”  
   
You started to pace away from his screen, but somehow it swerved around the walls over to you, coming to a dead stop on the wall in front of your face. If he could grin, you swear he would.  
“You realize you don’t know everything, do you, Hadron? You talk about destiny and the multiverse like it’s your oyster, saying you can change your fate when in reality, your fate’s the one changing you.”  
“So let it change me, then.”  
“You make a lot of mistakes, don’t you.”  
   
Once again, D.O.O.M.E.D. stepped out into the room from the panel in the wall. He twirled a knife expertly in his claws. “It’s so good to see you again.”  
You squinted, meeting his cyan eyes. He looked much more carapacian now, the upgrades he’d been giving himself made him look almost shelled now, ball-jointed and areas once revealed covered in thick metal.  
“Now hold still, it’ll be quicker that way.”  
   
As he approached, the adrenaline kicked in. Your mind told you to try and get that knife of yours back. You’d have the upper hand. You swung a punch, and with a hard metal BANG, D.O.O.M.E.D. recoiled, a dent in the new metal where you’d hit.  
“Aw, I just installed that too.”  
   
You’d started to charge at him, but he flung the knife, and you just barely dodged as it cracked the concrete wall and clattered to the floor. Before you could dart to it, D.O.O.M.E.D. hit you in the back of the head, a metallic pain echoing through your skull.  
When your vision came to focus, he was in front of you again, picking the knife back off the ground. He bolted towards you, and you quickly dodged to the side, tripping him with your leg on accident. He hit the ground hard as the nearby wires retracted away from him instinctively. As he took his time getting up, you tried to scramble a bit away but suddenly, wires from the floor caught you by the ankle and caused you to fall as well. The breath was knocked out of you as you hit the floor, and within seconds D.O.O.M.E.D. stood over you.  
“I guess you never had it in you.”  
   
You kicked at his heel, and as he kept himself from falling again, you flipped over and got to your feet. You grabbed at the knife in his hand, but he quickly sliced at you. You started to feel blood dribble down your fingers.  
D.O.O.M.E.D. was going to go for another strike until he was caught off guard by something audibly making a short buzzing noise. “Oh, what now?” he growled. He turned back to you and said, “I’ll be back for you later.”  
   
He stepped through the panel again and vanished. Looking down, you could see your wrist cut open on one hand and your knuckles busted on the other. You just sat down again, pressing the wounds into your sleeves to clean them of excess blood. You were going to have to do something if you wanted to get yourself, and more importantly them, out of here.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, it's been almost a year and I just got around to writing the one chapter that's been the inspiration for this whole fic!  
> On the day after I move, this little series is gonna turn two years old! How sweet is that?
> 
> Song quoted is Fellow Feeling by Porter Robinson.  
> It's literally what I based this fic on. Help.

You paced the room uneasily. Your mind ran wilder than the wildest of animals, you felt like the tiger in the cage. Minor things like this could drive you mad. Meddling with the details was not your hobby, but it was usually your job, and somehow that was coming in handy even when things didn’t quite make sense.

At least, they never made much sense to you.

There was one person you could check to see if it ran through their head.

 

Mobius was a melting pot of nonsense, and even the hardest of riddles he could work out. Okay, maybe he couldn’t solve everything alone, but he could still run the pieces of a puzzle through his head and come out with something, even if it only made sense to him.

 

You grabbed the screen, which had gone unused for a while, you thought.

No sensors were going off. You clicked around the lower levels, finding nothing until you went up, into an area the bunch was only in a few days ago (at least, you thought it was days).

It seemed WV, AR, and Mobius had been pushed back from the location they were last in.

 

They were kinda surprised to see you. They looked tired and beaten to a perhaps medium extent, at least they didn’t look as rough as they did two years ago. That gave you a lot of relief.

They looked like they were expecting you to speak first. You recoiled slightly from the screen. How the hell were you going to explain this?

 

Maybe it would come naturally.

 

“Mobius,” you said, trying to grab his fleeting attention.

“Yeah?” He perked up almost suddenly.

“There’s a lot I have to tell you. I’m not sure how though, and I don’t understand it, so maybe you will.”

 

You opened your mouth and let your mind do the talking.

“I cried, for I didn’t think it could be true, but you and I might’ve always known one another, and that we could not only evoke, but conquer a place of our own. And that everywhere, that has ever existed, was all in service of our dream.”

 

“Now please, hear what I hear.”

 

As if on queue, the machinery hidden in the background began to whir again, this time perhaps more aggressively as D.O.O.M.E.D. was supposedly storing power for whatever reason, whatever he was planning.

 

A gunshot rang through the room you were in, cracking the glass of the screen you held. It flickered black for the briefest of moments, and you panicked, shaking it till it came back to life.

AR had pulled a pistol out, it wasn’t his, that you knew, and he was looking around in a panic.

 

WV looked confused, a little scared. Mobius squinted intently at the screen, and you swore you could see a hint of the Mobius you knew before the cataclysm.

No, you were thinking wrong. Your Mobius wasn’t a different one than the one you knew before the cataclysm, but he was the same person.

 

“Let me explain,” you began to talk again. “This ugliness, this cruelty, this repulsiveness, it will all die out. And now, I cry for all that is beautiful.”

 

You took a sudden blow to the head from behind, and you landed onto the concrete floor head first, scraped areas of your body burning and stinging. The screen had been knocked away from you. You held up a hand to see the damage done to your palm.

Upon lowering it, you watched D.O.O.M.E.D. crush the screen with his foot, sending sparks jolting up him, but he was unaffected.

 

As you slowly tried to get to your feet, you felt metal claws around your neck, and your body passed out, going limp from shock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  This art was made by me almost a year ago from today, captioned "thinking of cata sequel ideas + listening to fellow feeling = fuck".
> 
> You heard it here, folks.


End file.
